6

"...6 games to 2." the referee announced.

He calmly exited the court.

There was another match coming after theirs and practice was almost over: they had no time to waste. Not that he had actually screwed his match against Tezuka on purpose. No. He just wasn't in the mood to play.

Or rather, his head had been busy with various datas bugging it. And none of them had anything to do with his opponents.

As he extended his hand to reach his sportbag, he caught a glance of two pairs of foot on his right. He nevertheless kept on with his movement, caught his towel and covered his whole face with the green cloth.

"Inui, are you feeling alright?"

He almost smiled at the note of worry in Eiji's voice.

No doubt they all thought Tezuka's crushing victory had shaken him. It was true that back in the past, he used to scold himself whenever he would let their captain win by 6 games to 1 or even 2. He even remember promising himself never to let these two situations ever happen again. And he had kept that promise all along the years, as a freshmen, as a sophomore and as a senior. Until this very day.

No wonder Eiji and Oishi looked both surprised and compassionate. Because in a way it felt like he, Inui, had failed in his goal once again, and failed hard.

But there was no failure, simply because he did not care the least: Past was past and right now he had another goal. He had different dreams.

"Inui...?"

"I'm fine." he said removing the towel.

The two Year three were staring at him, their eyes attentive to any display of sadness or breakdown. But they did never find anything, first because Inui wasn't feeling anything like disappointed or depressed and second because Inui was very well known for his absolute self-control.

"Ah, but if you want to talk...I'm here." Oishi said, in his typical motherly style.

"Yeah, me too..."

He only nodded at them.

"Well, it seems that Echizen's match against Takashi is almost over..." the vice-captain announced.

"Hum." Eiji nodded. "We are playing next, right?"

"Yes...See you later Inui."

It wasn't until they were far away that he took his orange notebook and started writing down whatever had been on his mind. There were still a lot of things he had to elaborate for the training menu and he even missed some datas about the year-two, especially those which concerned his physical condition, but he wasn't some sort of Medical: there was no way he could get these infos.

He paused.

Well, maybe he would just have to ask the Junior about it, and hope the latter would answer him.

He closed the book and checked on the time.

Kaidoh was to play Fuji on court B in some minutes, depending on how long the Momoshiro-Arai match would last. And right now, he was nowhere to be found.

He was certainly off somewhere for an extra preparation.

Inui smiled at his own statement.

Maybe he had collected TOO MUCH data on the Year two already.

6

He pulled the door open and entered the administrative building of the school. From the hall, he could hear voices chatting loudly, sometimes laughing in a sort of chorus, and he even recognized the very high-pitched voice of his English teacher. As he went further in the corridor, he saw and smelled the smoke emanating from the Teachers' smoking restroom, for its door wasn't completely shut.

He hurried his pace a little and soon reached the stairs.

Climbing them one by one in his typical steady step, he was surprised to find the first-floor almost desert. Usually, there would have been five or seven students waiting for the Headmaster's secretary to allow them in. He recalled when he came there a week ago he had had to wait something like half an hour to get the random documents and the University application forms he needed.

He stopped in front of a grey wooden door.

There were no sound coming out and for a moment he thought no one was in.

He nevertheless knocked.

"Come in." Coach Ryuzaki's cavernous voice answered.

He stepped in.

She seemed to be in the middle of some work: there were a lot of paper scattered on her desk and a strong heat was emanating from her computer, which clearly indicated that she had been using it non-stop for hours.

"Ah, Inui...What is it?"

He stopped halfway in front of her.

She was looking at him expectantly and he suddenly felt ill-at-ease. He had all her attention for sure, but he had no idea how to put in words what he had come to ask her. He didn't want her to become anything like suspicious towards him and particularly towards his recent Tennis matches results. He didn't want her to discover that somehow, he had lost interest in playing Tennis, because he still belonged to the team, a team that she managed, a team that she wanted to be deeply involved in the matches it played.

"Ryuzaki-sensei, how did you know that you wanted to become a coach?" he asked, bluntly.

The woman frowned, a little surprised.

Certainly she didn't expect something like that from him. He wasn't the time of person who would come to anyone and ask for advice. He very much relied on himself for everything. And usually, when he pushed the door of their coach's office, it was either to give her random informations he thought she might be interested in, or to demand some special arrangements in the team for an upcoming match. Like that time he asked to be paired up with Kaidoh against Ohtori and Shishido from Hyotei High.

"Well, that's not something you can answer straight." she remove her glasses. "I recall that I used to play Tennis and that I liked it very much. But at some point of my career I think I found out my body couldn't go further and I started to think that maybe I wasn't made for the game."

She paused for some seconds, maybe pondering on what to say next.

"Don't get me wrong, it's not like I didn't want to make any efforts anymore. In fact, all along those years I played, I had been improving and getting better and better...But just one day, I realized I wasn't getting anywere. You play, you get hurt, you start to play again, but one day, you will just have to stop. That's what I did."

Inui was still listening, so she continued.

"I loved Tennis and I had dedicated my whole life until then to it. I could still play from time to time, but there wouldn't have been any kind of thrilling feeling you get on official match. But what could I do? I had stopped everything...Then I fell upon Echizen Nanjirou playing in a court against some kids."

She took a glance at him to observe his reaction. Inui's brows were curved in an expression of deep attention and genuine curiosity.

"He was a Junior back then, and even though the other kids were two or three years older than him, he beat them in a row. Just by watching him play, I got that feeling back again and even more: it occured to me that he wasn't only good at Tennis, or even talented...he was a genius, a real one." she sighed "Well, that's how I started to train him. I wasn't much of a coach at the beginning, I just knew Tennis quite good. Still, as years passed I guess I learned and became one...and I'm still learning."

He adjusted his glasses.

"Hum. So it wasn't all decided at all..."

"If you want to know if ever since I started to play Tennis I wanted to become a coach, the answer is no. If I hadn't met Echizen-kun I think I would be rooting somewhere, far away from Tennis courts. Not every Tennis player get into coaching, Inui."

He nodded understandingly.

"It depends if you feel ready to do it or not and if you feel ready to take the responsability of people's future. In fact, coaching is pretty much like teaching in a school for special students." she concluded.

"But, how do you know when it's time to let go of your students?"

"Oh, that's easy to answer. You let go of your students when you feel you've teached them all the things that you could possibly teach them. The rest is up to them..." She said, smiling.

"I understand. Thank you very much, Ryuzaki-sensei". He said, bowing.

"You're very much welcome, Inui-kun."

6

"Oh, Kaidoh..." He said, caught of guard.

He was early, and Kaidoh being earlier than him was unusual. As much as the junior liked Tennis, he rarely left his classroom before classes effectively ended.

"...Aren't you supposed to be..."

"Sensei is sick." The Year two cut in.

"Hum, I see."

Inui walked to his locker and dropped his sportbag on the bench. Opening it, he proceeded to look for his keys, careful not to mess his jersey.

"Inui-sempai..."

"Yes?" he answered without looking at the other boy, as he finally found his keys.

"I think you should stop coaching me."

He almost dropped his keys, but still managed to grasp them before they escape from his hands.

"Why?" he asked, still facing his locker.

There was a short beat.

"It's doing you no good." Kaidoh stated.

Inui almost burst in laughing at this.

Of course the Year two wouldn't know. He wouldn't know how much and how long he had struggled to finally find something that was more like him. He wouldn't know what he had been through from that first day he started doubting his Tennis play, to this very day he found out he was taking the wrong path. He wouldn't know that he had spent a long time thinking about how he should start things over, and thinking about what he really liked in Tennis over, if he even liked Tennis. He wouldn't know about those moments of inner fights, those moments of intense pain, those very moments that made him realize what he truly wanted. Those moments that made him understand that his Data Tennis was all wrong, and that Data Coaching was the right path his love for Tennis should have taken since the beginning. Because since the beginning he had been trying to push past what was already his limits without much success.

"I know what I'm doing." was his flat reply.

"I will never accept someone sacrifying himself for me, Inui-sempai!" Kaidoh shouted out of sudden.

This time Inui was forced to facevault.

"How come?" the Senior asked, his tone ever so flat.

The other boy's eyebrows furrowed even more in both contained anger and what seemed to be surprise. His eyes started to wander around the room. Certainly he was feeling guilty for yelling at someone he was supposed to respect.

Inui looked at him, his blank face carrying unwavering thick glasses, waiting for some explanations.

"You're not playing as good a you used to do, Inui-sempai." he paused. "...Ever since you started to train with me. That match you played against Tezuka-buchou a week ago was...it didn't feel anything like you. And when you played Fuji-sempai yesterday, it was...wrong."

The sophomore took a deep breath.

"Don't cut off your own training because you want to help me with mine. If you were to become a bad player because of me, I wouldn't like that."

Inui's hand on his side started to play with the keys.

So Kaidoh was feeling guilty for his lack of results...That was something a little unusual. The Year two as far as he remember rarely felt anything for anybody except annoyance, or anger. He wasn't the kind of person to worry on someone else's play or condition....unless it had something to do with him. Like that time his great rival Momoshiro was "screwing around" -as Kaidoh nicely put it- against Sengoku from Yamabuki High.

The keys kept dancing between Inui's hand, as silence calmly settled in the room.

Come to think of it, they were the same, in a way. He, Inui, didn't recall having any kind of relationship with Kaidoh before that day they played double. They had never really talked to each other, they even barely greeted each other in the corridors. Inui didn't know how it all started. He only knew that one day he needed the other guy to play a match, and that he ended up helping him with his training...But what a change from today. Now, he had become his personal coach, and somehow, they had gotten to know eachother.

Well, maybe Kaidoh's worrying over his play wasn't so weird as it seemed.

"You don't have to worry about that." he said.

Kaidoh's face swiftly changed from its tanned complexion to a quite bright red.

Inui could help but smile.

He could perfectly understand the other boy's embarassment and annoyance.

Kaidoh would simply never admit he worried about anyone. At least, not openly, but Inui had just unfolded the meaning behind his previous words. And he had done even worse. He had made sure the Junior could neither retaliate nor deny, because answering back would be disrespectful, and because telling his sempai he was wrong would seem totally ungrateful...afterall, Inui had always been the one helping him.

"Maa, maa...it's fine." he turned back to his locker, keys in hand.

"But...your play is..."

"Just because I play lighter than usual doesn't mean I've become bad." Inui stated, opening his locker.

"...I see." Kaidoh mumbled apologizingly.

For a moment, none of them spoke more.

"Kaidoh, I have to go somewhere tomorrow, so here are your exercices for the day." he handed the other boy a piece of paper, filled with handwritten characters. "Make sure to do all of them, in this very order. After you're done with them, you can start practising that move I showed you last time..."

The Year two nodded, his face ever-serious.

He folded the paper and put it in his sportbag's left pocket. Taking his racket and towel along with a bottle of water, he slowly exited the room.

Five minutes later, Inui was doing the same.

6

TBC...